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“Get your knits ready. The show is about to start!” Our lead guitarist strikes a cacophonous chord, and the other three band members begin to play. The sound is deafening and almost pushes me off the stage. Our costumes are equally discordant. My co-knitter and I wear long white ball gowns with combat boots. Our heads are covered by knit Viking caps with horns, and we hold shields proclaiming, “Knit or die!”. We jump up and down on the stage, swinging our Brunhilde braids in circles. I concentrate on trying not to put out my eye with the needle. Two of our guitarists wear kilts and Hawaiian shirts, their waist-length hair impressive for its scraggliness. “I don’t understand how I got here; I’m not a good knitter. My grandma never stopped knitting, even in a nursing home, explaining the two or three afghans possessed by each of her grandchildren. I fall more toward the creepy techie end of the spectrum, however. I’m in Joensuu, Finland, surrounded by black leather and tattoos. Given the numerous piercings, I doubt any band member could make it through airport security without setting off metal detectors. Black and white face makeup and the number 666 complete the picture. Surviving the dark, cold winters in Finland is understandably tricky. Eating a diet of sauteed reindeer, blood dumpling soup, and salty licorice would also make anyone cranky. The result seems to be high rates of alcoholism, heavy metal, and knitting, which may explain why Finland has more heavy bands per capita than any other country; 84.53 per 100,000 Finns compared with the US at 5.5 per 100,000. The judges for the show are a heavyset middle-aged woman, a female Ozzy Osborne clone with a black wig, bustier, torn stockings, and finally the requisite nerd with dark shorts, a vest, and a gondolier’s striped shirt. Bands represent four continents around the world. The Australian contestants feature a knit panda with a blood-red tongue who bounces up and down with the lead knitter in a mutual rave. The German contestant cannot attend because both she and her lavender “yarnicorn” have come down with COVID. String Thing from the UK prances onstage dressed in a yarn dog costume, surrounded by dancers with bare butts adorned with toilet paper. The last band from Japan comes on stage. A man with a Kabuki painted white face, black wig, and flowered kimono knits what looks like a teal penis shroud. Two Sumo wrestlers clad only in diapers shake their gigantic breasts and crash into each other’s bellies, emulating dueling Tyrannosaurus Rex. One of the Sumos shoots a bird with his middle finger, and the crowd roars its approval. The lead judge returns on stage and holds up the Kabuki knitter’s hand. The victor sticks out his tongue and waives the penis shroud triumphantly in the air. The contest is over and he’s a world champion!

Jennifer knew her mother to be a top-notch negotiator. She had sold real estate for years, owned her own business, a property maintenance company, and loved to make a deal. As a woman in a man’s industry, she had the Ginger Rogers philosophy. Be better, even if you have to dance backwards and do it in heels. So, when Jennifer left for a three-week vacation she had no doubt her mother, along with her dad, an astute businessman, could manage the contractor doing their bathroom remodel. Pascal had redone Jennifer’s house from the studs up. It had taken a year; it was exquisite, and he felt the results made him part of the family. Problem being, he wasn’t. At least in Jennifer’s eyes. He was just a contractor with a French accent, who charged a lot of money. Probably ten percent above the going rate at least. But he was trustworthy, impeccable, and forthright. Sometimes too forthright, but she assigned his candor to French ancestry. What Jennifer forgot was that her parents had aged. She still saw them as they once were. Tough, relentless negotiators, energetic, always astute and determined, successful, winners. Pascal wore them down with the first trip to Tile Man. He walked them through seemingly endless rows of marble, porcelain, travertine, and on and on. Mom decided to sit down in one of the model bathrooms after fifteen minutes. “Couldn’t we just do this? My feet bunions hurt and I’m tired.” In response, her husband simply glared at the pink marble and kept walking. Within thirty minutes, Dad sat down in the black and white retro-tile bathroom and said, “I think this is it!” They both kept hoofing along. No resolution. Everyone was hot and frustrated, especially Pascal. The next day, Pascal brought three samples for the parents to review and steered them toward sample A. They agreed because it looked okay, and they were tired of the whole scenario. They just wanted a raised toilet to flush and a tiled shower with a pulsing head. “Sure,” they said. “If you think the design, the tile and the marble will look good, go for it. It just needs to be done before our daughter gets home from vacation. You know how she can be.” And he did. Two days before Jennifer’s return, Pascal called Mom into the shower and said, “What do you think? Do you love it? It’s so French!” Mom paled and stated, “I have to sit down.” The ceiling was finished with a gray and white leaf patterned tile, matching the floor of the shower. The walls were gray, white, and gold marble. It looked like a tiled coffin, or a rummage sale gone wrong. “What, you don’t like it,” Pascal inquired dismayed. “It’s not I don’t like it,” Mom responded. “It’s just, well, it’s horrible,” and she began to cry. Pascal really liked the family and especially the mom, but he didn’t understand. It was the latest in French design. He’d expected applause not condemnation. Dad and Mom stated, “Take the tile off the ceiling. Who tiles a shower ceiling anyway? See if that helps.” It did, a little, but not quite enough to appease Jennifer when she arrived home eager to review Pascal’s masterpiece. “Oh my …..obscenity after obscenity,” followed. “What the…. obscenity after obscenity….. I can’t even talk to you now, Pascal. After all the money I paid you, you rushed this job and ruined my parents’ bathroom. They’ll never be able to sell the house with the bathroom looking like this. "What the…".obscenity repeated again. The next day, Jennifer refused to let the Frenchman in the house and spoke, or rather yelled at him in the driveway. When he came back to address the parents, his eyes were filled with tears. He had loved this family, taken an interest in Jennifer’s career, her children’s sports, the grandparents, everything. For a year he had dedicated himself to improving their home. This is how he was thanked! Mom was distraught. She knew her daughter to be tough. “What happened? What did she say?” “She wants a five-thousand-dollar discount, meaning this job will actually cost me money. I don’t understand. It’s the latest in French design. I lost another job to complete this for you, Madame.” Mom knew he loved the line, “Latest in French design.” She also knew better than to ever let a contractor leave one’s premises feeling disrespected and unhappy, let alone cheated. “Mon Ami, un moment, je propose un compromise,” she stated in her respectable but rusty French. She pulled out her checkbook and wrote him a check for twenty-five hundred dollars. “Will this be an acceptable peace offering?” “I cannot take it, Madame. So kind of you, but your daughter, she would not like it.” “My daughter doesn’t have to know, and this is between you and me, Monsieur. I don’t need her approval. I insist.” “Well, could you make the check out to my daughter, Emily, please? She wants to go to a trade school to train dogs. This would be her tuition.” “Mais bien sur, Monsieur Pascal. Avec Plaisir.” Even bunions can’t keep a good negotiator down.

At 6:10 am he got up and walked the dog. Every morning. The little mutt he never wanted expected to eat promptly at 6:45 but needed to relieve himself and stretch his short legs before inhaling his food like a vacuum cleaner. So 6:10 am became the wake-up hour, for Marshall. After making breakfast for the dog, Marshall made coffee for his wife and himself. In the past she liked to sleep later. Since the dog arrived, she would get up earlier and sit with the two of them. Sometimes, she would even walk the dog, supposedly her dog, after breakfast, but she usually left it to Marshall as well. “He enjoys the exercise,” she reasoned. He missed his job as a consultant for Aerospace, but mostly he missed waking up his grandsons, nagging them to eat breakfast and getting them to school on time. At first, he liked retirement. He had worked since he was a boy on one thing or another and never had time to do exactly what he pleased when he wanted. Not working hadn’t bothered him much until the boys went and grew up on him. Now he often felt at a loss. He liked being grandpa and taking care of the kids. He had missed a lot of caretaking when his daughter was young because of his work schedule. He felt grandparenting was his second chance. But it all went by so fast. Everybody was independent now. Nobody really needed him to do anything anymore. Boys made their own breakfasts or didn’t. They drove themselves to school and sports. His life no longer had to have structure. He was free to do whatever he liked whenever he wanted. Independence. No repetitive schedule anymore. Open-ended. Unstructured. Meaning, he came to realize, bored out of ones’ mind. Then the dog appeared out of nowhere one day. “I’m tired of waiting for permission from you people to get a dog, “His wife declared to the family.” Here he is! Deal with it.” No one really liked the dog. They all made snide remarks about him. The boys, as it worked out, would tell their parents, “Look how crazy the Grents are about that damn dog. They treat him like a person. The little beast can do no wrong!” The parents joked, “That’s exactly how they treated you when you were little. Are you jealous of a dog?” As it turned out, they were. They began talking to their grandfather about the dog. They bought presents for him like poop bags with paw prints on them, toys, even a vest with a patch reading “beware of peeing fur-missile.” Neighbors enjoyed seeing the little dog walking with the big man. They would stop and talk with Marshall, find out what new adventures the two of them had been having. Before he knew it, Marshall had made several friends. The dog nobody wanted turned out to be a gift in disguise. “It’s really my wife’s dog, Marshall always stated.” Smart wife.

"How am I supposed to pee?" she wondered. She knew standing was involved, and the toilet seat should be up, but what should she do with her penis? Hold it or just let it hang loose between her legs? What about when she finished? If she shook it, wouldn't urine get all over her leg? The AI party had won the last two elections by a super-majority, perhaps, because many of the voters were computer programs that didn't find excuses not to vote. And one of the party leaders, maybe as a joke, programmed various "requirements" for all citizens. This election cycle, the theme was sensitivity. The AI algorithms reasoned if you walked in someone's shoes, you would be less of an asshole, so every adult was required to "be someone else" twice a year. She had already role-played a worker in a poultry processing plant and spent a day as a stray mutt living on the streets. She had decided that the mutt had a much better life. But today, she was to spend four hours morphing some XY chromosomes. She did research on the internet in preparation for her role. One article claimed every male in the world has heard these three expressions in some form or another: "Don't be a pussy," "Man up," "Grow a pair." At first, she wasn't sure what pair they were referring to and was embarrassed when she learned the answer. Other statements she read claimed: "Invisible until something is needed" "You must be strong and reliable, or you won't make anyone horny." "Your pain is inferior, always." "Being interested in a woman is a thin line between being flirty and creepy." Perhaps, she thought, this explained the statistics about males being more likely to drop out of school, binge drink, and commit suicide. She finally finished peeing and pulled up her pants. She noticed pee spots on the fly of her jeans but decided that pulling out her hair dryer to dry them wouldn't fit her XY role. Each role-playing adventure included four random experiences specified by the AI programs. Her first assignment was to go grocery shopping. She noticed the only men who carried lists in the store were married, so she went without one. Her former boyfriend hated to shop and had always done surgical strikes, so she quickly headed to the meat section and loaded up on ground chuck and buns. On the way out, she passed the paper aisle and picked up a 24-pack of toilet paper - no reason to have to make another trip soon. Finally, feeling the need for something healthy, she grabbed two frozen pepperoni pizzas and a six-pack of Modelo. She then headed home, where it was time to mow the lawn. There were plenty of females who cut their yards, but she wasn't one of them. After pushing her neighbor's mower out of the garage, she stared at it for a long time. She wasn't sure if it needed gas or how to check. She halfheartedly pulled on the cord and succeeded in wrenching her shoulder. She glared at the mower, willing it to turn on. "For God's sake," she thought., Ten-year-old boys can start a mower, but they had ten years of "growing a pair." She decided her lawn didn't need mowing and to move on to her next experience. She tried her best to look cool when she walked into the bar. Giant TVs lined every wall, and the sound was deafening. Most of the bar occupants stared at a screen where oversized men wearing helmets and loud uniforms crashed into each other. Sitting at a booth in the corner, she looked around. At an adjacent table sat two women about her age. She nodded at them as she sat down. When the bartender took her order, she asked him to add two drinks to her tab for the women. When he told them, they raised their glasses in a toast but then looked away and kept talking. She was too embarrassed to pursue it further and wondered how men had the courage. Finally, she left the bar and headed home. The last experience was supposed to be a surprise. When she walked in the door, the phone was ringing. Her mom's voice on the other end sounded strained. "Your father just had a heart attack. They don't know if he's going to make it." She tried to think of brave things to tell her mom. She tried not to feel her own heart go thud. She tried not to cry. She tried "not be a pussy." She always thought men had it easier in society. After all, they had most of the money, power, and prestige. She knew these four brief experiences were inane AI claptrap and not representative of most males. She certainly would be glad when the next political party returned to power. But she also suddenly realized that "manning up" was not as easy as she had assumed and that this experience might actually help her be less of an asshole.

As the youngest of six, I always felt submerged under the ebb and flow of my older siblings activities. My senses were overwhelmed by their blasting and blaring; I could not think, and because I could not think, therefore, I wasn’t. That’s how it felt, anyway. I became the kind and giving one. Also, the silent one. They told me I was at first “cute,” then “handsome,” but I never knew what to do with that. Girls pursued me, and I couldn’t respond, so rather than have them witness my inability to respond, I avoided them. Oh, eventually I got over some of my inabilities. The others, my siblings, grew up and moved away, some of them far away. I stayed, and learned how to love the difficult but interesting parents that the others had feared, mocked, blamed. I was the only one of the six to become interested in family genealogy. Every relative I was told about by my parents or discovered on my own, in present-day reality or in history, I treasured. Yes, I came off as sentimental, unmanly, unambitious. This led to feelings of being submerged within the small social groups I managed to become part of: bicycling enthusiasts, railroad trivia buffs. I continued with the kindness, the giving. It was all I had. Then I received the first of several inheritances from relatives whom no one else had bothered to contact or care about. I had not asked for this, nor expected it. Three-hundred thousand dollars in a bank account, in my name. I had a friend who helped me choose some investments. I submerged my naive ideas about stocks, bonds, and other such things and took his advice. I began to receive dividend checks. Then another relative died, leaving me a house in another state. I had it renovated and was able to rent it to a young couple. I kept in touch with them. They named their baby after me. By the time they were ready to move on, that house had doubled in value. Women began pursuing me again. This time I was ready. I was nearly 50. My parents had died. I was still living in their house, submerged in their memories and possessions. I chose Andrea, who tried, in her way, to pull me away from that. We began to travel together a bit. I received yet another inheritance from a cousin who’d died in Afghanistan; not money, but a collection of journals about his war experiences. Andrea and I worked diligently for a year, turning her writings into a book, which sold rather well. There was interest expressed by a movie company. Yet I still felt submerged. Inundated by the very existence of others. If Andrea had not been a gentle, quiet soul, I would have not been able to live with her. But she was gentle and quiet, kind and giving. Did she suffer from the same sense of submersion? We began to talk about this. She was a middle child, always trying to pacify both older and younger. I had no conscious recollection of wanting to compete with or sabotage any of my siblings. But now, on the rare occasions when I did see them, I’d start quiet arguments over details, or question their interests. I was told I’d developed a superior attitude, but I did not feel superior. I felt instead that I was starting to breathe after decades of being smothered. I was new to having opinions; new to expressing them. Andrea remained quiet. She seemed happy to make up for my demeanor by catering to, flattering, and fawning over my siblings, especially my recently divorced brother Frank. When would this facade wear down? I cautioned her, but she protested that she really cared for them, all of them. Andrea and I were partners, lovers, but we were not married. I finally suggested marriage. That’s when she told me that she’d fallen in love with my brother. Submerged again, I struggled. Something in me wanted to shrink back, as before. To let others take the stage, have their way. My old habits threatened to return like a tidal wave. I thought perhaps I should want to fight for Andrea, but I did not know how. I just wanted her to be happy. Or most of my psyche did. The other, more primal and newly-unsubmerged part of my psyche wanted to kill them both. So I did.

Robin knew that the “permanent record” was often wrong. Even birth certificates and death certificates were filled with inaccurate information. Gravestones filled with fallacy. Stanford Binet IQ tests placed the score of “idiot” on 80 - 90% of Italian immigrants in the early 1900s. Robin always believed he could overcome his poor IQ score, and his misattributed parentage. He could, he thought, overcome his record, until the dawn of the internet and its utopian step-child, the World Wide Web. Several years ago, when Robin was released from his military service, and before he tried to return to college, Robin found himself broke and without the resources to pay his rent or feed his grumbling gut. In a desperate state, Robin had his own Jean Valjean moment and was caught shoplifting food. It was a front-page article in his small-town paper and that article and the court docket case that followed it were the first things found when his name was entered into Google Search. Five years later, it still is, and perhaps always will be. Confession may have wiped his soul clean, and the court case against him may have been expunged, but the internet refuses to forgive sins and is unexpungable. The internet had deemed him an outcast. Employers hiring, Landlords renting, schools admitting, all played close attention to the great data cloud in the sky and Robin was most often not hired, rented to, or admitted to higher education. His “Permanent Record” made him a risky bet for the majority of authoritative institutions, so Robin accepted his lot and took a job as a night janitor. During the day, he attended Community College and on the weekend he was a volunteer and recipient of the local food bank. Robin worked hard and studied hard, but his situation did not improve. He was regularly rejected for better-paying jobs and no one was handing him a scholarship to a four-year institution until one day an overworked and underpaid Community College professor read his thesis on the “permanent record” of the internet and its effect as a modern-day caste system. Jim Charles, the community college’s only anthropology professor recognized the care and the passion in the thesis and decided he should get to know the student who had written it. When Robin got the note that his teacher wanted to meet with him he assumed he was in trouble. He assumed he would be accused of using Artificial Intelligence to write his paper though he had not, but how could he prove that? He couldn’t. What he discovered in the meeting with Mr. Charles was that this teacher believed him, and after a number of more meetings, he found that this teacher actually believed IN him which was all Robin ever really needed or wanted: someone to see him, rather than his permanent record. Whenever Robin met people in the future he would eventually ask them: “Who was it that believed in you”? The answers were always worth listening to.